


All You Holy Men And Women

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Catholicism, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, everything is nelson and murdock and nothing hurts, irredeemable fluff, patron saints, spoilers for the book of tobit, team save matt's dumb ass, what do you mean season two happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: Everyone in Matt's life suddenly seems to be sporting some interesting accessories.





	

1.

He first notices it when Claire's cleaning a wound on his scalp – a hard enough hit to lacerate through the helmet, and he's probably going to end up staying on her couch the rest of the night to make sure he doesn't have another concussion. He's leaning forward, and she's bent over him, and—something shimmers just in front of him, something that smells like tin and lead, a flicker of displaced air that's hard to focus on.

"Are you wearing a pendant?"

Claire makes a pleased noise, probably because he's so coherent. "It's not bothering you, is it?"

He catches it, briefly, between his thumb and forefinger. It's tiny, oval, but he can feel the engraving on both sides. "Saint Raphael?"

"Mmm." She drops a wad of bloody gauze at his side. "I'm not gonna stitch this, but you need to keep it clean and try not get hit there again in the near future."

"I never try to get hit," he points out, leaning back. "Isn't Raphael the angel from the Book of Tobit?"

"Not all of us were raised by nuns, Matt." She gives him another gauze pad with a dollop of triple antibiotic ointment on it. "The card that came with the medal says he's the patron saint of medical workers."

He presses the pad against the wound, ignores the sting. "And the blind. That's part of the plot of Tobit—Raphael helps Tobias slay a demon, get the girl, and cure his father's blindness."

"Oh." Claire's heartrate ticks up just a little, honest surprise. "Apparently I've been reading the wrong parts of the Bible, then, if there's a plot."

Matt shrugs. "Raised by nuns. Sometimes you take the entertainment you can get."

 

2.

He's walking Karen home, not because there's any particular danger on the streets but because sometimes she still needs the reassurance. She takes his arm like she's guiding him, but the jangle of her heartbeat smooths out and the smell of adrenaline isn't quite so strong when she does. Karen, he suspects, is bravest person he knows.

"Are you gonna go out later?" she asks, with just enough weight to know she means Going Out and not going back to the bar.

"Just a couple hours," he says. He's practicing telling the truth lately.

She nods, but before she can follow up her phone starts ringing somewhere in the depths of her bag. "Oh—shit, hold on, I probably need to take this. Can you hold--?"

He takes her keys and her Moleskine noteboook while she roots around for her phone. The pepper spray key-chain is strong enough to make his nose itch, just hanging there, and there's another keychain shaped like a cartoon cat that could probably double as a small, nasty brass knuckle. A compact LED flashlight, a whistle, and--

"Hey, yeah, sorry about that. No, I can talk for a minute."

Matt concentrates on the small medallion so he's not tempted to eavesdrop. It's metal, but he can't smell the composition over the pepper spray. _Saint Francis de Sales_ is engraved on one side, over what feels like a portrait of a bearded man. On the other side, in simple sans-serif letters, _Pray For Us._

"Okay, sure. Yeah. I can do that. See you then."

He asks as she hangs up, "Where'd you get the saint's medal?"

Karen gives a little forced laugh, but her heartrate ticks up. "Oh, that, that was a gift." Hmmm. "It's Francis de Sales, he's supposed to be the patron saint of journalists, and, well, I could use all the help I can get, can't I?"

She's not lying but she's not happy he saw it. He can't tell if it's just embarrassment or something else. He's been working on trust lately, though. "I think you're doing great on your own."

She laughs again, face radiating warmth. She takes her keys back and takes his arm again. "Flatterer. C'mon, I just scheduled an eight o'clock meeting with a source, I can't show up looking like a zombie."

 

3.

Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is--

"Enemy action," Foggy says, bouncing his baseball off the wall. The spreading vibrations light up the room for Matt and make his headache even worse. "She's hiding something, dude."

"If it's discoverable, she has to turn it over eventually," Matt grumbles.

"Yeah, so what's the benefit of dragging it out? If it's something that helps DeAndre--"

"If it doesn't help him, she'd be rubbing it in our faces, along with a plea bargain."

Foggy thankfully sets the ball aside, only to get up and start pacing. "Unless she wants to spring it on us? Whatever she's hiding, it's gotta be time-sensitive or she wouldn't be dicking us around like this."

Matt opens his mouth to ask about witness statements when he hears it—the whisper of metal on cotton. He might've heard it earlier, actually, but this time it's obviously synchronized to Foggy's gait. When his pacing takes him closer to Matt's chair, he catches a whiff of tin and lead.

He reaches up and stops Foggy with one hand, zeroes in on the medal hiding under his tie. "Whoa, hey--" Foggy blurts, leaning back.

"Saint Thomas More?" There's a picture, too, but Matt can't feel it through the weave of Foggy's shirt. The letters, though, are stamped deep in a sans-serif font. Just like Karen's. Just like Claire's.

Foggy bats his hand away. "What, did you smell that on me? Do we need to have the boundaries talk again?"

Probably; Matt has realized he needs to work on those, too. "I heard it rubbing on your shirt. You're not Catholic."

"Is that a rule?" Foggy's got his hand pressed over the medal now, almost protective. "I don't remember a warning label on the package, and so far it hasn't burned my heathen flesh."

"Claire has one in the same style," Matt says. "So does Karen."

Foggy's heart picked up when Matt found the medal, but that was surprise. Now it's nerves. "Are there really that many styles of saint medals?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"You didn't actually ask a question."

That's because Matt doesn't know how to turn the scenario in his head into a question. "Are you...did the three of you plan this?"

Foggy sighed, and flopped down in this chair. "It's not impossible that we may have drunk-shopped together."

Matt tries to form that picture in his head. "You and Karen and Claire. Drunk-shopping."

"It's not impossible that we may have met for drinks without telling you," Foggy adds. Now he sounds guilty.

"Which...led to drunk shopping."

"Hypothetically," Foggy says, "it's not impossible that the supposed drinks may have lead to a conversation which may, potentially, have lead to drunk shopping."

"You're not under oath, Foggy," Matt says. "You all got drunk and raided a Catholic Supply?"

He sighs. "We all got drunk and decided we need all the help we can get. Sort of a team mascot thing. And we bought them off Amazon."

"What team are you talking about?"

So soft only he could possibly hear it: "Team Save Matt's Dumb Ass."

Now Matt's heart is doing a two-step and he wishes Foggy could hear it. "You all got drunk...because of me?"

"That's occasionally the only way to handle your...you-ness," Foggy says with an expansive gesture, but there's affection in his voice, not just sarcasm. "I just waved at your everything. I figured we all ought to be on the same page, if only for alibi purposes, and a fifth of Jack seemed like a great addition to the conversation at the time."

"And then you all picked out saint medals for yourselves."

"Well, now that the cat's out of the bag…" Foggy goes into his desk drawer, pulls out a crumpled padded mailer and fishes around inside it. "Here, I'm gonna toss this."

Matt catches the little plastic baggie in the air and turns it over in his hands. The same size and shape as the other medals, the same sans-serif font, taped to a square of cardstock he doesn't need to read. "Saint Michael the Archangel."

"Yeah. 'Cause of your middle name, since it turns out Saint Matthew is the patron saint of bankers, and, no offense, fuck them."

Saint Michael is the patron saint of warriors. "My confirmation name, too."

"That's….I don't know what that means."

Matt is—he's grinning, he's not even sure why he's grinning. His friends have been talking about him behind his back. He has driven his friends to drink. His drunken friends bought him a saint's medal, and talk about a team like it's something they chose, not something he dragged them into. He doesn't think he could tolerate wearing the medal on a chain, but maybe a keyring like Karen's—or sewn into the lining of his suit, somewhere the pewter won't get bent. He'll have to ask Melvin. Maybe he should introduce Melvin.

"Okay, control the shit-eating grin, please," Foggy says, but he's pleased and relieved and probably smiling, too. "We were actually having a serious conversation about asshole DAs before you decided to grope me."

"I'm sorry for groping you, Foggy," Matt says, because above all he needs to work on apologies. "And thank you for the medal."

"You're welcome. I hope you don't actually require an avenging angel to swoop in and protect you."

"Be a little off-theme, don't you think?"

Foggy groans and rubs his eyes. "Okay, so, please, back to the asshole DA…."

**Author's Note:**

> There's not a 1:1 patronage system for saints to occupations, so I was able to take a few liberties with the medal choices. 
> 
> St. Raphael the Archangel is the patron saint of medical workers in general. The patron saint of nurses specifically is St. Agatha, while St. Camillius de Lellis and St. John of God are patrons of both the sick and of nurses. 
> 
> There are two patrons saints of lawyers, St. Thomas More (got assassinated for trying to get Henry VIII to calm down and stop seceding from the Church) and St. Ivo (or Ives, or Yves, who was called "the defender of the poor" and god damn I was really close to picking him.) St. Catherine of Alexandria is also a patroness of lawyers, orators, philosophers, students and anyone else whose work relies on verbal argument. 
> 
> St. Michael the Archangel is the patron saint of warriors, soldiers and police, which makes Matt's medal slightly ironic. 
> 
> If Melvin got to be part of Team Save Matt's Dumb Ass, his medal would absolutely be St. Barbara, the patroness of arms, armorers and artillery.


End file.
